


Thank you for driving me... crazy.

by Maddorable



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crack, Eventual Smut, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25900831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maddorable/pseuds/Maddorable
Summary: Imagine the following situation: You drive drunk, get stopped by the police and lose your driver’s license for several months. Because your way to work by public transport takes too long, the colleague you don’t like at all (!) takes you in his car every day. You inevitably spend a lot of time together, your annoying, pain-in-the-ass colleague thinks you’re best friends now and asks you to be his best man for his upcoming wedding. And somehow you end up in Las Vegas.Oh yeah, and everyone in the office is insane.
Relationships: Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 1
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This idea is inspired by a tweet of the Swabian Police in Germany who hopefully never get to see this. I’m not familiar with drunk driving and its legal consequences, so please bear with me if this is not quite accurate. :D

Roronoa Zoro would describe himself as someone who had full control over himself and his actions. A man who stood by his principles and who wasn’t easily thrown off balance. A man who even in the most hopeless situation had a relaxed grin on his face and somehow found a way out with ease. 

At the moment he found himself in one of those unpleasant, not everyday situations, and he thought that he could now weasel himself out with a trained winning smile and his innate charm. _There was no problem here at all._ He had this situation completely under control until the following words came to his ears – hard and unyielding like a slap in the face – and he saw himself wavering a little.

“Driver’s license revoked for six months.”

Roronoa Zoro struggled for composure. He was sure he could still turn things around. No problem at all. He’d already dealt with other difficulties in his young life. Definitely. Probably. Perhaps.

“Gentlemen, I think we can agree on another solution to this matter.”

The chunky policeman who sat opposite him raised a bushy eyebrow. Then he looked down in disbelief at the form he’d filled out himself just a few minutes ago, as if he couldn’t believe what the good-looking guy in front of him had just said.

“You do realize you were driving a car with 2.2 blood alcohol?! _Two point two_!” He hit his fist on the table so unexpectedly that the younger policeman standing next to him flinched violently.

“But I was driving in an excellent way! I even stopped at every stop sign! You do have a clue how many fuc—stop signs this city has, don’t you?!”

“Please hand over your driver’s license. Immediately. And then please sign this form.”

Roronoa Zoro couldn’t believe it. It hadn’t been the first time he’d driven home from a visit to the club on a Friday evening with alcohol in his blood. If it wasn’t for the random checks, they wouldn’t have noticed him at all!

The thought of not being able to sit in his beloved silver Porsche 718 Cayman S for six months – Fuck, that was half a year! – not being able to stroke the steering wheel and its beautiful dashboard during a drive, shook something in his ever so calm attitude. 

He swallowed.  
Maybe there was a little situation now after all.

“But I need my car! It takes over an hour longer to get to work by public transport!” And then he wouldn’t have enough time to go to the gym in the morning. Shit, his life was falling apart.

“You should’ve thought of that before you drove with 2.2 per mil in your blood! Give me your license _immediately_!”

Roronoa Zoro was sure that he’d never been confronted with such cruel despair in his life. With a sigh and a facial expression that made the young policeman flinch one more, he reached into his wallet and shoved his license across the desk with a heavy heart.

He felt naked and as if someone had given him a long and painful vasectomy with a fork. He could only hope that Melissa, his beloved car, would forgive him.

***

When he came home early in the morning – he’d taken a taxi so it wouldn’t feel too much like a humiliation – he sat down on the couch in his living room, closed his eyes and sighed heavily. Well, shit.

In addition to the driver’s license revocation for six months, he had to pay a massive penalty. He also had to undergo an MPA in five months, which certified his ability to drive, to get his license back. Roronoa Zoro was pissed off and usually in such moments he would sit in his beloved Porsche and drive a few rounds through the streets. 

Melissa... he was hoping she was okay. The police had confiscated his car until someone with a valid driver’s license came to pick it up.

Zoro was thinking. The biggest problem was how he could get to work on time when he still wanted to go to the gym in the morning. Maybe he had to shift his daily visits to after work, even if he wasn’t excited about the many questions that would inevitably come up. And then he had to buy a ticket for public transport – just like any ordinary city dweller.

The thought of being in the company of dozens of people who stank and ate disgusting stuff on the train or were noisy even before he’d had his third protein bar gave him a stomach ache. The descent into the proletariat hit him hard.

He desperately needed someone who was willing to drive him to work in the morning for the next six months. He’d figure it out somehow.

***

He couldn’t figure it out.  
The whole weekend he’d been thinking about who was suitable and discreet enough to drive him to work. He’d thought of an excuse – beloved Melissa wouldn’t be well, she needed a repair, but six months? He’d sprained his leg and couldn’t drive himself for a long time, but that would also mean that he couldn’t go to the gym anymore. So he needed someone who didn’t ask any questions.

Two acquaintances from his gym came into consideration but one of them always listened to schlager music on the radio – and that was an immediate exclusion criterion – and the other’s hygiene standards didn’t exactly match those of Zoro’s.

In the end, he hadn’t found anyone suitable and had been forced to take public transport on Monday morning. As expected, because someone up there must really hate him, it’d been terrible. 

On the first train a middle-aged woman had sat next to him, who had been gawking at him and his perfectly shaped muscles blatantly and with her mouth open the whole time. Zoro’d spent 45 minutes living in constant fear of being touched inappropriately. Although his last shower was only two hours ago, he instantly felt dirty again. 

A toddler had been screaming non-stop on the second train and Zoro was about to pull the emergency brake and jump off the train. He kept that option open for the way home.

Despite careful precautions, he’d been more than 30 minutes late for work. He’d had to change trains three times and hadn’t included in his planning the time he needed to walk from one track to another. Classic.

When he finally arrived in his company out of breath, because he’d spent the 300 meters from the station to here in a sprint, they’d all stared at him in amazement. Since he’d started as an insurance consultant at the Grand Line Insurence Agency three years ago, he hadn’t been late even once. Moreover, no one had ever seen him out of breath outside the gym (sexual encounters not included). It must’ve been a shock for his colleagues.

Nami from the accounting department, who was sitting two desks away, came over to him immediately even before his computer had booted up properly.

“Hey Zoro, was there a zombie apocalypse or why are you late?” He could feel her gaze sliding down his body. “And you look so... exhausted. You never look exhausted.”

She sounded genuinely shocked. Zoro rolled his eyes and growled slightly. “Traffic.”

“Really?” Usopp’s voice could be heard coming from the opposite side of the office. “I didn’t read anything on the news. Hold on, I’ll check it out.”

Zoro rolled his eyes again. 

Usopp was mainly responsible for all technical matters in their department, like document layout, database maintenance and server requests. He was a nerd, had a Spiderman mousepad, an almost half-naked anime figure of a busty woman standing on his desk, for which he was regularly dissed by Nami – and his desktop wallpaper showed a blue police box that resembled a phone booth and had something to do with a doctor.

“Hmm... well, there’s nothing written in the news. No accidents, no traffic jams. I’ll check Twitter. Woah, here’s a video of a chimpanzee sitting at a supermarket checkout and throwing food at customers. You gotta see this!”

Why couldn’t anyone leave him alone? And why did Nami have to sit down on his desk now, just as he was about to start working?

She’d crossed her legs, drank slowly from her coffee cup and was still examining him in detail, apparently for clues that could somehow explain his desolate condition. He tried to pull out last week’s insurance applications from under her ass in such a way that they didn’t tear.

“Don’t you have anything to do?” growled Zoro.

Nami smiled and that rarely boded well for him.  
“I do, but it can wait a while longer. This here is more exciting right now.”

For Nami, many things were more exciting than her work, even though she was good at it. Her work ethic, which had never been very strong anyway, had become much worse since she’d started sleeping with the boss. 

She slowly bent over to him. “I feel you’re hiding something from us. I bet you 100 bucks I can get it out of you in less than 15 minutes.”

“Che. I’m not betting you.”  
And that certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he’d already lost a lot of money and his first unborn child to Nami anyway.

Damn that witch, could this day get any worse?

“Maybe a barbell fell on his blockhead this morning and it made _klonk_. You know, the sound when iron hits something empty.”

…!  
Someone must really, really hate him.

Zoro took a deep breath. He had this situation under control. Still, he imagined himself reaching over the table, kicking aside the ugly house plant that stood between their desks and beating the daylights out of the fucking face that belonged to that voice.

He’d tried to ignore the man until now which wasn’t very difficult because he’d been busy with a phone call. Now he was waving briefly to Nami to get her attention while he held the microphone of his headset closed.

“Nami, I bet 20 bucks on my theory!”

“Deal!” said their accountant and blew him a kiss, which he caught casually in the air and pressed against his chest – God, Zoro wanted to throw up his three protein bars immediately – before returning to his phone call.

“But of course you can insure your legs with us, Ms Kureha. There is nothing you cannot insure with the Grand Line Insurence Agency. Your age? No, even at 91 years old, there is no problem. You see, women are like wine. I am very sure your legs look excellent. Pardon me? Oh, you are flattering me, dear.”

He laughed and Zoro was wondering how many injuries he could inflict on his own ears with a paper clip so that he didn’t have to listen to that kinky shit anymore.

Vinsmoke Sanji.  
His _favorite_ colleague. His daily nuisance.

He’d started with them four months ago as an insurance consultant as well and had been employee of the month ever since. Tall, slender, cheerful and always perfectly dressed. 

The women in the canteen were at his feet, all the female employees of the other departments courted his attention. If it were up to Zoro, he would’ve handed Sanji over to another department (or the dumpster in the parking garage) long ago. He would’ve even paid people money for it!

That man was getting on his nerves and Zoro couldn’t for the life of him understand why someone had to put on an expensive-looking suit every day when their contact with clients was mostly limited to phone calls.

Vinsmoke Sanji was everyone’s darling because since he’d been hired, their customer growth had increased by thirty percent. 

God, how he despised that overdressed guy and his shiny smile!

“Guys, the chimpanzee has opened the register and is now leaving with a lot of cash! That’s so hilarious!” Usopp cackled.

Zoro’s right eyebrow twitched dangerously. He still hadn’t been able to pull out the applications from under Nami’s buttocks. 

“I’ll file a complaint about you with the boss!” he growled. 

“No, you won’t. And you know why?” She grinned extremely self-satisfied and was still trying to intimidate him with her evil eyes – and Zoro knew very well that he didn’t stand a chance against someone who went to bed with the boss.

“Ms Kureha, I am afraid that is not possible. I am an engaged man. But, you know, if it was not for my fiancée...”

Goddamnit, enough!  
Something snapped inside him.

“Fine, FINE! I lost my driver’s license and had to take the train this morning.”

And then, all at once, everything around him came to a halt and an uncomfortable silence settled over the office. Usopp made a sound like someone was strangling him and stopped his video, Sanji ended his phone call with a hasty “Ms Kureha, dear, I will call you back, we have an emergency!” – and Nami almost let the coffee cup slip out of her fingers.

What the hell was wrong with these people?!

“You—what?” For the second time on this still very early morning Nami looked at him shocked. “Is it an ‘I don’t know where I dropped my wallet and now it’s gone and I need to get a new license’ kinda lost?”

Zoro gritted his teeth.

“No, more as in ‘I may have driven with too much alcohol in my system and the police carried out a random traffic control – Although I’d stopped at every stop sign! – and then they took away my license for six months’ lost.”

Nami blinked. “They took Melinda away from you?! How can you even function right now?! Do you need valerian tea? Chopper!”

“Her name is Melissa – and shut up!”

Usopp and Sanji had slowly approached his table and they all looked at him now with a mixture of shock and pity. What the fuck?!

“No seriously, that car means everything to you.” Nami said. 

Yes, he loved his silver Porsche 718 Cayman S very much and would kill anyone who touched it indecently or harmed it. And yes, maybe he was more tender and sensitive to his car than to his one night stands. So what? So far, none of the guys he’d slept with in the past had ever complained about his performance in bed.

“Zoro…” 

To make matters worse, Sanji suddenly came over to him and put a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. _The hell?!_ Apparently that guy wanted to die.

“You once said that every day without Melissa feels like a meaningless, dull emptiness filled only with the soft crying of your suffering heart.”

Zoro gasped for air. “I never said such shit!” He snarled. “Get your hands off me or I’ll kill you!”

Sanji responded to his threat with his characteristic charming smile and raised both hands in a defensive posture. A few blond strands fell into his face and Zoro felt an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach when he realized why the ladies in the canteen always gave this pain in the ass an extra dessert.

Usopp, who was tapping on his tablet, thankfully tore him from his unpleasant thoughts.  
“But it takes you almost two hours to get to work by public transport.” His fingers slid deftly and skillfully across the screen. “And you have to change trains three times! So not cool.”

Zoro sighed.  
“I need someone to drive me to work in the morning... and maybe in the evening, too,” Zoro said to no one in particular. Because damn it, he couldn’t imagine going through six months of this morning’s horror. Perhaps he should move. Or change jobs. Or emigrate.

“Hmm...” Nami, who was still sitting on his applications from last week, tapped her lips with her index finger as if she was thinking about something.

“Doesn’t Sanji live near you?” she said then, out of the blue.

He did?

“Oh, just one sec!” Usopp’s fingers moved with great enthusiasm. “Right! You two live only 2.78 kilometers apart!”

At some point Zoro had to have a serious talk with that nerd about privacy and sharing his personal data with everyone. But for the moment he was seriously worried about the direction this conversation was taking.

Nami’s face glowed and Zoro had the sudden feeling that the worst of this day was yet to come.

“Couldn’t Sanji—”

NO.

“—take you—”

DON’T.

“—to work—”

SAY.

“—in his car?”

IT.

…

Roronoa Zoro would describe himself as a man who even in the most hopeless situation had a relaxed grin on his face and somehow found a way out with ease. 

Roronoa Zoro realized at that moment that he’d been in an irreparable delusion about himself all along.

Even before he could say something that would probably have sounded stammering and uneloquent, or before he could come up with a suitable excuse, he suddenly heard Sanji and his sunny, cheerful, warm voice saying:

“Sure, why not? I don’t mind.”

And something very deep inside Zoro that’d built up over the last four months since this nag had entered his life crawled out of the darkest cracks of his subconsciousness and did a treacherous somersault.

Usopp lifted his head abruptly because it’d become louder in the corridor. “Guys, the boss is coming!”

As if struck by lightning, he ran back to his desk, hissed “9.76 seconds left!” and tried to disappear behind his monitor as best he could.

Nami drank the last sip of her coffee in leisurely peace.

“Good morning, everyone. I hope you had a good weekend.”

Nico Robin took off her sunglasses and walked through the office in tall black boots, which you could certainly hear from twenty kilometers away. With her matching tight-fitting black dress, she presented, as always, an elegant appearance that was intimidating to many.

“Team meeting in 10 minutes. I’m going to kick some asses today and want to check in with you guys.”

As she passed his desk, Zoro could hear her quietly whispering to Nami: “No sitting on desks. At least... not here.”

Nami lowered her eyes.

Oh, please.

“All right, Robin! You can count on us!” Sanji said, beaming with joy, and straightened his tie.

Zoro made a choking sound.

Sanji’s gaze fell on him again and he grinned – and what Zoro didn’t like at all was the fact that this shiny pain in the ass was standing next to him (much too close) and Zoro had to look up to him because he was still sitting on that damn chair.

“Let’s exchange numbers later. Yay, carpooling! I’ll make us a great playlist! Do you like Céline Dion?”

He was so utterly and completely fucked.

_To be continued_


	2. Chapter 2

When Roronoa Zoro awoke the next morning from restless dreams, he felt something that hadn’t happened to him for years: nervousness.

Instead of getting out of bed immediately and starting the day as usual, he stayed lying down and stared at the ceiling. Why was he nervous? The feeling didn’t suit him. He was rarely nervous. He hadn’t been nervous at exams, job interviews, and other occasions when he had to prove himself because he knew what he was capable of. He hadn’t even been nervous the first time in bed with a guy at the tender age of sixteen.

Well, _maybe_ he’d been a little nervous back then.

Point is, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that feeling as intensely as he did at that very moment.

Pictures of yesterday were wafting through his mind – of how that annoying ass had shamelessly ripped the cell phone out of his hands with these… long and warm fingers (okay, maybe he’d smiled friendly and maybe he hadn’t ripped it out of his hands but politely asked and grabbed it... with these long and warm fingers), and Zoro was shocked to discover that “Sanji 😊” was listed in his phone book afterwards. With. A. Smiley. Face.  
An emoji.  
Gross.

Zoro had been forced to give him his number and he’d felt deeply sullied in doing so. He could only hope that the guy would leave him alone as much as possible. At least he hadn’t gotten any annoying messages so far. Maybe that nag knew what was good for him.

On the way home (he’d taken the train again because he needed at least twelve hours of lead time to get ready for this shitty arrangement), he’d made a detour to his underground car park and had stared with a little melancholy at the empty space where Melissa used to stand.

He had been feeling restless all evening since he hadn’t been to the gym all day and his body was screaming and craving for physical exertion. Not even a quick wank in bed had helped.

His daily routine has become so messed up. Not only did he have forty-five minutes to go to work with Sanji today – okay, actually it was forty-eight minutes, he’d googled the route again even though he had been driving it every morning for years (Usopp would be so proud of him nevertheless) – no, he also needed to ask Sanji to pick up Melissa at the police station after work so he could make sure she was safe again. Who knows what the fucking cops had done with his car in the meantime.

Zoro sighed heavily and ran his hand over his face. The day hadn’t even started yet and he was already fed up with everything.

After he’d done his morning routine, had eaten three protein bars that he didn’t like at all today, Zoro found himself on the sofa. Even though he’d gotten up later than usual this morning, he still had enough time until Sanji would pick him up at the agreed time because he couldn’t go to the gym.

Zoro nervously bobbed his right leg. The prospect of having to make small talk with this pain in the neck later worried him to no end. Zoro hated small talk. It was an exchange of meaningless, banal information for which his breath was too precious.

Nevertheless, he found himself grabbing his laptop and searching for small talk topics on the internet, hating himself deeply. (But again, Usopp would be so proud of him.)

He didn’t know how much time he’d spent on it but all of a sudden his cell phone vibrated. Zoro looked at the clock and then at his display. The horror was there and it’d found him.

 _Little Pikachu and I are waiting for you downstairs. 🤍_ – Sanji 😊

What the fuck?!

The protein bars suddenly lay heavy in his stomach. No, he wasn’t desperate. Or maybe desperate enough to never drive again in his life with alcohol in his blood.

Zoro closed the laptop, got up, grabbed his things and locked the front door behind him. Then he leaned against it briefly and took a deep breath.

It was time. But he had prepared himself! He’d googled small talk topics and could now, if he had to, talk about the weather in twenty different countries for thirty minutes straight!

As he was going down in the elevator from his eighth floor he looked at Sanji’s message again and spontaneously decided to change "Sanji 😊" to "annoying shitface from work" with a turd emoji, and maybe he only felt _a little_ bad about it.

Sanji was waiting for him right outside the entrance – perfectly dressed in a dark blue suit and with a bright smile on his lips as if he was still trying to compete with the sun.

“Good morning! I hope you slept well!”

He did not.

“Hn. Morning.”

Then Sanji turned around and revealed something that... that could possibly be described as a vehicle. Zoro blinked and felt an unpleasant sweat trickling down his back.

Of course he hadn’t known until today what kind of car this man was driving. Why should he care? Until yesterday, their interaction had been limited to office contact and listening to this guy shamelessly flirting with every person on the phone to attract more clients.

Sanji opened the passenger door and made an inviting gesture that any woman would certainly have been more than willing to accept. Fucking asshole.

“What... is this?”

In front of Zoro stood an eye-cancer-causing, squeaky yellow little car that spontaneously reminded him of a crippled duck on cocaine.

“This is Little Pikachu, be nice to him!”

This... _thing_ was a three-door car, and unlike his own spacious Porsche, it looked like a toy car. And what the hell was that shit with the name?! Zoro was still standing there and hadn’t moved an inch. Taking the train suddenly seemed like a luxury voyage to him.

Sanji smiled crookedly. “Have you never seen a Mini Cooper?”

Zoro gave a grunt, pulled himself together (Because he was a brave man!) and got into the small car, very careful not to bump his head or knees anywhere. But since Sanji was as tall as he was, it had to work somehow. What didn’t work at all was that the guy was still holding the door open for him and Zoro felt slightly ridiculous and his ears felt hot and that didn’t help at all.

***

After Sanji had maneuvered his duck out of the residential area, they were now on one of the main roads, and Zoro decided that at least he didn’t have to worry about Sanji’s driving skills. They seemed to be quite tolerable.

For a second Zoro looked over at his annoying colleague, could see how elegant and casual at the same time he was sitting at the steering wheel in his suit and operating the gear shift. Gear shift, jeez. That was so last century.

Sanji seemed to feel his gaze as he looked back for a moment, smiling, causing Zoro to quickly turn his head away and look out the window. Forty-six minutes till they got there. No, he wasn’t counting.

“It’s expected to rain in Dubai today.”

“Huh? Uh... okay? Are you planning on going on vacation?”

“What? No.” He was thinking for a second. Forty-five minutes left. “And the temperature in Stockholm today is thirty-four degrees.”

Sanji suddenly chuckled.  
“Thanks, I’ll take that into account if I spontaneously fly to Sweden this afternoon.”

Zoro turned his head towards Sanji and frowned.  
“Are you making fun of me, shithead?”

Sanji smiled at him from his seat. “If this was just a pathetic attempt to make small talk with me, then yes. It was pretty miserable.”

“Shut up.” Zoro growled and felt his face getting hot.

For some reason, which shouldn’t be addressed in detail, Zoro was annoyed with himself. Sanji was a communicative, social type who found it easy to interact with people. It was as if he’d learned at some point in his life a repertoire of means of expression for every situation.

Zoro on the other hand... God, talking was sometimes so exhausting and overrated. There were far too many words. If he had his way, they could’ve been silent all the time but he felt he had to talk to this idiot at least a little bit.

And in return this asshole was making fun of him now?!

“A good starting point for a conversation is, for example... food. That is something everyone does.” – The same goes for shitting, Zoro thought. – “For a start, you could tell me what you had for breakfast this morning.”

Zoro made a disparaging sound and looked out the window. Fucking Sanji. He didn’t need lessons in small talk. Hell, he was a grown man who even knew how to use a... a... washing machine! With fabric softener, for fuck’s sake!

“Same as always. Protein bars.”

He heard Sanji next to him inhaling with fright.  
“I’m sorry, I’d just understood ‘protein bar’ but I’m pretty sure I just misheard because this isn’t a healthy, wholefood meal.”

Pff, so what? What did that annoying asshole know about food?

“It was two different sorts of protein bars.”

“Zoro, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. There’s so much you can eat for breakfast and it gives you enough energy for the day. No wonder you’re always so grouchy in the morning.”

Wait, what?

They stopped at a traffic light and Sanji looked over at him. Zoro didn’t look back because... Jesus, why did the sun have to shine on his face? How could anyone have eyelashes that long?! Ridiculous.

“What’s your favorite food?”

Couldn’t he shut up for once?!

No one had ever asked him about his favorite food. Not even the guys he’d already dated in his life wanted to know this kind of personal information. And why was he suddenly thinking of something like that now? My God, there must’ve been some kind of poisonous substances emanating from that ugly little car that clouded his brain.

“I like... well, Onigiri is quite nice,” he suddenly heard himself say against his will.

Sanji beamed all over his face and Zoro furtively glanced over to him. What a weirdo.  
“Oh, and what flavor?”

“Salt… is quite good. Nothing fancy.”

Zoro bit his lower lip to silence himself. What he liked and didn’t like was none of this annoying idiots’ business. This was just a work-and-drive arrangement and Zoro wasn’t going to reveal any of his personal information here.

Thirty-nine minutes left.

Apparently it must’ve been obvious to Sanji how much he was squirming here because that bastard just nodded and then looked back at the street. The traffic light changed to green and they drove on.

Zoro thought about mentally making a list of all the things he would learn from Sanji on these lovely joint trips so that he could use them against this idiot one day.

Suddenly Sanji chuckled – He _chuckled again_! What the hell. – and stroked his fingers along the steering wheel.

“I can see you’d rather not talk about such things. Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally since I know you’re quite shy and usually need time to warm up.”

... !!!

THE FUCKING FUCK.

“I’m not—what even are yo—fuck you, man!”  
Zoro felt his face getting hot for the second time that day. 

“Really, Zoro. No problem at all. I guess you can tell me all your dirty secrets sometime later.” Sanji smiled at him as if he’d just won the lottery and Zoro wished for nothing more than to be hit head-on by a truck.

Thirty-seven minutes left.  
It really couldn’t get any worse, could it?

“I watched ‘The Real Desperate Housewives’ again yesterday because there was only a rerun of ‘The Bachelor’ on,” Sanji said in a chatty tone, and Zoro felt something unpleasant creeping up his throat. “And I have to say that I was totally shocked to see that Cynthia broke up with Guy and actually moved in with Richard. You must’ve heard about that, right? I mean, Richard and Guy weren’t just neighbors, they were best friends! No wonder Geraldine and Patricia don’t talk to Cynthia anymore. That’s pretty intense. Never thought women could get into physical fights like that. That vase had looked so expensive.”

He quite simply just wanted to die.  
Maybe there was a screwdriver in the glove box of that ridiculous car that he could ram into both his ears.  
The idea alone almost moved Zoro to tears.

“And then Patricia’s dress, oh em gee! You could see her nipples all the time. I mean, it’s nothing bad, I’d be the last one to complain about it but she got a piercing in her right nipple couple of weeks ago and I felt a little uncomfortable with that sight. That must’ve hurt like hell with—oi, what’s wrong?! Oh shit, you’re not going to throw up, are you?!”

Thinking about it like that, Zoro could actually feel a few chunks of vomit in his throat.

“Wow, and here I thought I was the only one who was uncomfortable with Patricia’s pierced nipple. Want me to pull over for a minute?”

“No need.” Zoro coughed and waved his hand. “Just… just don’t talk about it anymore.” He swallowed whatever had accumulated in his throat and felt deeply sorry for himself. Holy cow, he didn’t just have a panic attack, did he?

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really mind pierced nipples and I don’t want to judge anyone—oh, don’t tell me you have any and I just put my foot in my mouth?!"

Sanji’s gaze wandered from the street to Zoro’s torso, and Zoro became fervently aware that he was wearing one of his skin-tight muscle shirts, as usual. He crossed both arms in front of his chest and felt his face getting hot. A G A I N.

“Grrr, I don’t! Look at the fucking road or are you trying to kill us?!”

Because that would be wonderful and he would definitely support Sanji 100% in this undertaking.

“Oh, you’re right. Sorry! If you were wearing any nipple piercings, I’m sure I would’ve noticed because... your shirts are always really tight, and after all, your abs are often visible, so yeah, it certainly wouldn’t have escaped my notice if your nipples were pierced.” Sanji laughed a bit and turned left as innocently and smoothly as if he hadn’t just said something earth-shattering that Zoro’s brain hadn’t quite translated yet. Zoro blinked. Three times in a row.

WHAT.

“Anyway, I think I’ll have the cheese casserole with mushrooms in the canteen today. That sounds quite passable. I’m well aware that the food in our cafeteria isn’t the best, I mean, if you tried my cheese casserole sometime, you’d agree with me but it often tastes quite good. So how about joining us once in a while instead of sucking on your protein shakes alone in the office? Because, seriously Zoro, that is so very sad.”

Zoro’s brain, which still hasn’t recovered from the shock of hearing the combination ‘nipples, visible abs, and It wouldn’t have escaped my notice.’ in one sentence, was having trouble keeping up with the speed of Sanji’s train of thoughts. If Zoro’s brain were a computer system, it would’ve hung itself gloriously by now. Irreparable damaged, ready for the trash dump. Just like his shitty work computer did sometimes.

Zoro gritted his teeth. It annoyed him that Sanji was thinking about how Zoro spent his lunch break. On the other hand, his brain was again trying to understand why Sanji was thinking about how he spent his lunch break. Zoro could still remember how this guy had asked him a few times if they wouldn’t all like to have lunch together in the canteen – at the very beginning, when that pain in the ass had just started working in their department.

“I’ll... think about it,” he finally said, just to say anything at all, but the prospect of sitting with the others and listening to the gossip about other departments and people in their company made him groan inwardly.

“That would be great! I’d also treat you to a pudding because your steroid-infested body will crave unhealthy sugar so hard.”

...

Still more than thirty minutes. Time was working against him.

“I think that’s enough small talk for… our first time, ne Zoro? I’ll spare you my comments on the plastic surgery documentary I saw the other day.” Sanji chuckled again as if Zoro had done something very amusing.

“And I promised you something else, after all.”

To set yourself on fire?

Sanji looked at him with a grin that could possibly be classified as irresistible on women. Zoro swallowed hard. Fucking asshole².

With a nimble movement of his left hand, smooth and elegant as if he’d done it a hundred times before (he probably had), Sanji fetched his cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and attached the phone to the cell phone holder that was mounted on the windshield between the two seats.

“I bet you can’t wait to finally hear Céline Dion. I put together a nice playlist for us last night. Thank god, it helped me a bit to get over the sight of Patricia’s pierced nipple.” 

…

Zoro knew nothing to say, and he assumed that people who had to wait for the execution of their death sentence must feel similarly. Besides... he wanted to look somewhere else, out the window, admire the passing cars, think of Melissa but fucking Jesus, did this guy have _long_ fingers – long and slender and... urgh. 

The screen of Sanji’s cell phone turned on, showing a woman with long blond hair smiling at the camera. She was wearing a summer hat and a long yellow dress. Zoro felt uncomfortable all of a sudden because this was none of his business and he wanted to know as little of this pain in the ass’s life as possible.

Probably his fiancée, Zoro thought against his will and now turned his head towards the window. He saw his own reflection in the glass pane when the photo came to his mind once again. There was something strange about it but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“If you have any requests for tomorrow, let me know!”

Zoro would like a gas can and a lighter but he was sure Sanji didn’t have that in mind.

“I’m fine,” Zoro muttered, closed his eyes and accepted his fate.

They spent the next thirty minutes in silence, except for Céline Dion’s shrill, dramatic voice, and Zoro was about to feel glad that this odyssey had come to an end for the time being, when something… out of the norm happened just before they arrived at the company parking lot. Not necessarily something worth mentioning, he was sure – more like a small scratch on a polished surface that could be easily overlooked.

Sanji’s cell phone screen changed from the Spotify playlist all at once to the call screen when an incoming call made his phone vibrate. He cursed softly to himself, and because Céline Dion kept singing Zoro might not have heard it at all. Although not even five seconds had passed when the call came in and the display changed back to the playlist, Zoro was able to read the name on the screen. And he was sure those long fingers had been shaking a bit when Sanji had swiped the red button to the right.

As Sanji finished parking the car and turned off the engine, a notification about a voice message popped up on his screen. Sanji sighed, took a deep breath, and clasped the steering wheel briefly (and Zoro was certain he wouldn’t have even noticed that if he hadn’t been sitting right next to him) before Sanji turned to him with a beaming smile.

“Little Pikachu and I would like to thank you for the honor of riding with us today!” His voice sounded mocking but something was off with their usual pitch that normally drove Zoro up the walls.

Zoro’s sense of decency forced him to thank this idiot at the end of the ride. After all, it wasn’t a matter of course to be driven to work by a colleague. And he’d been squirming inwardly since this morning at the thought of having to thank this pain in the ass for something he himself didn’t have the slightest desire to do. He’d imagined it would be a cramp but before he knew it, an honest “Thank you for driving me.” had escaped his lips.

Sanji’s eyes widened imperceptibly but a part of his smile reached his eyes again. 

“You’re welcome. You can go ahead. I’m going to have a quick smoke and then I’ll join you.”

Zoro nodded, got out of the car and closed the door behind him. He’d imagined how happy and relieved he would feel to finally escape this hell but as he entered the building and glanced once more at the parking lot, he couldn’t help but notice that Sanji looked strangely lost next to his crippled little yellow car. The cigarette was stuck unlit between his lips as he stared at the screen of his cell phone.

Zoro shook his head at himself and made a scoffing sound. What the fuck was wrong with him? Seriously, he couldn’t care less about other people’s problems, especially those of Vinsmoke Sanji.

Just as Zoro was getting into the elevator and thinking about how this day couldn’t get any weirder, his cell phone vibrated. Zoro fished it out of his jeans, unlocked the screen and… he widened his eyes in disbelief.

_Hey, my research project is done and I’ve been back in town since yesterday. How’s life? Are you still single? Wanna meet and have a nice fuck like in the old days? 🍆_

_To be continued_


End file.
